Sympathy For the Devil (11 page)

At least the Dean had allowed him to finance the operation. Hicks knew he hadn’t talked him into anything or pulled the wool over his eyes.

Now all Hicks had to do was get the money.

Given the events of Central Park, Hicks was fairly certain that Colin hadn’t told Omar’s men much about the University or Hicks’ New York network. But Omar still had the good sense to run after his men went missing. That meant Colin may have told him something about the University, but there was no way to know exactly how much. Since Colin had known about many of the ways Hicks financed operations, so he couldn’t risk using the usual funding channels. But Colin hadn’t known about Russo, which made him the best option.

Hicks checked the time on his computer monitor. It was going on six o’clock, so Russo should still be in his office.

The money man had a lot of bad qualities, but being a clock watcher had never been one of them. Hicks’ months of surveillance on Russo had shown the money man was a creature of habit who went straight home most nights after work. Tuesdays and Thursdays were for his girlfriend. He always stopped off at the Bull and Bear and ordered a Laphroig on the rocks while he waited for his mistress to show up. He liked red wine with dinner. Usually Pinot Noir or Chateau du Pape. Desert was usually an all-night event back at her place. The wife chose to believe he stayed over at their studio apartment in Murray Hill. She’d never bothered to check up on his story. Besides, with Vinny out of the house, it allowed her to have her girlfriend over to spend the night.

Yes, the Russos led complicated lives.

Hicks called Russo’s private line, but it went straight to voicemail. Then he called the main office number, but the receptionist said he was gone for the evening.

Hicks didn’t like that. Russo going home early was a derivation from his schedule. And Hicks didn’t like derivations.

He went back into OMNI and tried to track Russo’s cellphone. The phone had been turned off, but the last GPS ping was fifteen minutes old and showed the phone was at Russo’s house on Long Island.

He could’ve had OMNI send out a signal to turn Russo’s phone back on, but Russo wasn’t used to the yoke just yet. Turning on his phone might spook him into doing something stupid and Hicks needed him calm. He needed Russo alive; at least until he got the hundred grand he needed to finance the Dean’s undercover operation.

Hicks directed OMNI to focus the University satellite on the two-story Tudor house that the Russo family called home in Suffolk County. He selected the ‘full scan’ option and the image on Hicks’ screen began to change.

The OMNI lens focused on a typical suburban home on a cul-de-sac, a bit larger than any of the others in the area. The Russo property’s normally-manicured lawns were now covered in a thick layer of snow, as was the separate two-car garage in the back. The whole scene appeared far more wholesome than it actually was.

Hicks selected the Thermal option as the satellite began reading heat signatures in and around the property. It revealed two cars in the garage; one engine slowly cooling from red to orange in the brisk November night. Vinny’s car. Judging by the heat signature of the engine, he’d just gotten home.

Hicks scanned over to the house. He saw a single heat signature in the living room; the size of the shape and its location on the couch read like Russo’s wife, Marie. Another shape was in the den on the west wing of the house read it was Russo himself, sitting at his desk.

There were no other heat signatures in the rest of the house, except for the heat signature of a cat in the upstairs bathroom. And, from what Hicks could see, Tabby had gotten into the laundry.

Hicks could’ve called Russo or emailed him, but chose not to. Because some conversations were better face-to-face.

He pulled his coat from the hook and went outside.

T
HE DRIVE
out to Russo’s place took just over an hour, which wasn’t bad considering it was seven o’clock at night. A lot of companies had closed because of the blizzard, so rush hour traffic was much lighter than normal.

Russo’s street house looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The colors of the Christmas lights along the eaves and roofs gave the snow a multicolored glow. Someone had even made a snowman complete with a carrot nose and raisins for the eyes and mouth.

Hicks would’ve thought the scene was damned near wholesome if it hadn’t been all so contrived. Because in the course of his research on Russo, he’d also done research on the people in his immediate circle. Neighbors, friends from church, and people in the contacts folder of his phone. It paid to be thorough. After all, blackmailing a guy whose brother-in-law was an FBI agent could make things more difficult than they needed to be without proper preparation.

That’s why he resented the Rockwellian facade of Russo’s street because it was just a facade. Russo’s neighbors were tax cheats and embezzlers, adulterers, and prescription pill addicts. Two had done time for vehicular manslaughter and one of them had been a coke dealer in college before she changed her name and moved to New York. Some of them voted Republican but paid illegal aliens to shovel their driveways and mow their lawns. Some of them were vocal Democrats who drove Mercedes and gave nothing to charity. They celebrated holidays, but left their religion at the front door of whatever church or synagogue they attended, if they attended at all.

Russo’s street wasn’t all that different than any of the other streets in the rest of the neighborhood or in the rest of the country for that matter. Human frailty was everywhere. Human frailty was Hicks’ stock and trade. Frailty was the grease that made the wheels of the University turn. Frailty justified its existence and kept its coffers filled.

There was a part of Hicks that knew his choice of professions should make him regret what he’d done with his life; for living off other people’s misery. But he didn’t feel an ounce of regret for anything he’d done because what he did served a higher purpose.

Hicks parked his Buick on the street a few houses away from Russo’s house. He pulled up the OMNI feed on his car’s dashboard screen and saw that Russo hadn’t moved from the den. In fact, it looked like he was more slumped at his desk than before. He looked well on his way to getting quietly drunk. Alone.

Hicks figured this was a result of their conversation. He’d seen this happen to new Assets before. Russo was no longer the head of the pack; the master of his own universe. None of his many secrets were his alone anymore. A stranger now had a knife to his throat and access into every unsavory aspect of his life.

Normally, Hicks could work up some sympathy for an Asset while he or she adjusted to the yoke, but he couldn’t work up a lot of sympathy for Russo. Not since the Madoff mess. Russo had gotten greedy and careless with the wrong people and would’ve gotten himself killed if Hicks hadn’t stepped in when he did. Men like Vladic always found out when someone was stealing from them, and when they did, the thief and his family took a long time to die badly.

Hicks didn’t have the time to accommodate Russo’s acceptance of his new reality. He needed the hundred grand Russo had in his safe and he needed it fast.

Hicks walked up the shoveled brick path to the front door. He knew the Russos always entered the house through the garage, but he wasn’t supposed to know that. He could’ve easily popped the lock and gone in that way, but with Mrs. Russo around, there was no need to cause a scene. He rang the front doorbell instead.

A string of gentle chimes rang somewhere deep within the house. The sound had just died away when Marie Russo answered the door.

According to Hicks’ surveillance of her husband, Vinny complained to his mistress that his wife had begun to lose her looks. Hicks’ file on her showed she’d certainly been prettier when she was younger—the years and children and a marriage to Vinny had certainly taken their toll—but she still looked pretty despite everything. Her eyes were sunken and harder than they’d been in their wedding photos. Her face thinner, but surprisingly free of wrinkles.

Judging by the emails Hicks knew she’d sent and the websites he knew she’d visited, Hicks knew she was overly conscious of the weight she’d been unable to lose after giving birth to her daughter twenty three years before, but she carried it much better than most.

“May I help you?” she asked.

Hicks flashed his best weary smile and used a name he knew she’d heard—one of Vinny’s employees—but had never met. “I’m Jerry Parsons from the office. Vince asked me to drop off something for him on my way home.”

“Oh, of course,” she said, remembering his name. She opened the door a bit more as she stepped back. “He’s in the study just down the hall.”

Hicks thanked her, but he already knew where it was. He’d already been in the house twice before when no one was home. Tapping into security cameras and reading emails and phone calls could only tell so much of the story. Technology couldn’t completely replace seeing something with his own two eyes.

That’s why he knew the door to the den didn’t have a lock, so he walked right in without knocking.

He found Russo sitting in the same position that Hicks had seen from the thermal image—at the desk with a glass of scotch in a rock glass in front of him. The TV was off and so was the radio. Even the computer screen on the desk was dark. Vincent Russo was just a man in a wood-paneled man cave, with only his trouble and his booze to keep him company.

Russo didn’t even bother to look up when he heard the door close. “Marie, how many times have I told you not to bother me when…”

And when he did look up, he saw Hicks standing on the other side of the desk. “Hello, Vince.”

Russo’s eyes went wide. “You? How did you… how did…”

“Marie let me in,” Hicks explained. “She’s not as run down as you tell people she is. You should do yourself a favor and compliment her more often. I know you’ve got Inez on the side, but you still live here, so…”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” He made a move for his desk drawer—the same drawer where Hicks knew he kept a nine millimeter Glock.

That’s why Hicks had his gun out first. He pointed the .454 Ruger at Russo’s head more for effect than intent. “Leave the nine where it is, Vinny. No need to get killed over an empty gun.”

Russo looked down at the drawer, then at Hicks. “How do you know it’s not loaded?”

“Because I unloaded it when I did a final sweep last week and you haven’t touched the drawer since. If you do now, I’ll shoot you in the knee just to prove a point.”

Russo sank back into his chair and dropped his head in his hand. It was a similar pose to the one he had in his office, but much more resigned. “Yesterday, you punch me in the face and hit me in the balls with a stapler in my office. Today, you just stroll into my house and pull a gun on me. What’ll you do to me tomorrow?”

“Nothing I don’t have to.” Hicks could see he already had Russo cowed, so he lowered the gun. “It’s time to start being part of the team, Vinny. I need you to do something for me, and I need you to do it tonight.”

“So this is how it’s going to be, isn’t it? Never knowing when you’re going to call or show up with some fucking request? From now until the day I die, I’ll always have to worry about you buzzing in my ear like a fucking gnat?”

“I already told you that you’ll hardly even know I’m around so long as you do exactly what I tell you to do. I won’t ask much, and I won’t ask often, and I’ll never ask you to deliver the impossible. And that’s why I’m here now.”

“I don’t care why you’re here now,” Russo said. “I don’t care what you do to me or to Vladic or to my family, because I don’t give a shit about anything anymore. Go ahead and shoot me. You’ll be doing me a favor.”

Hicks didn’t like his tone. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“You’re so fucking plugged into my life, so why don’t you tell me?” Russo pounded the desktop with the heel of his hand. “Do you honestly think I’m worried about some fucking lunatic four thousand miles away who
might
get around to killing me in a couple of days on the off chance him or any of the other fucking illiterate peasants who work for him can figure out that I skimmed from him? Why do you think they hired me in the first place? Because I’m their money guy. I’m the one who handles all the financials for them so they don’t have to worry about it. He even said he expects me to steal, so long as I don’t get crazy about it.”